By Richard Sheldon
Back in August 2015, BT announced that it would be withdrawing ISDN2 services in the UK by 2025, thus encouraging users to move to VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephony over the following 10 years. With 2 years of that 10-year deadline having already passed by, it’s becoming increasingly important for businesses to seriously start thinking about making the move to a hosted solution.
Ofcom estimate that there are still over 30m fixed landline and ISDN lines in the UK so communications resellers have a vast opportunity to help existing customers and potential new customers to make that all important move ahead of the game.
Here at Zest4, we understand that specifying hosted telephony solutions can sometimes be a challenge, particularly for resellers who are new to the technology. There are many different types of system and specification on the market but there is a suitable solution for most types of business, from one-man bands to supersize global enterprises, and the team at Zest4 are here to help resellers to navigate their way.
The first thing to understand when specifying a hosted telephony solution, is the customers’ needs and their existing infrastructure. The key things to consider are…
- The number of concurrent calls the company needs to manage
- Their available connectivity
- Their internal LAN infrastructure
Establishing these initial facts helps us to understand what features a customer requires and therefore the type of system that is most appropriate for them.
The other thing to understand when specifying a hosted solution is whether there is any industry legislation or regulations that impact their business.
An example of this, for the financial services sector, is the MiFID II (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) which comes into force in January 2018. The current legislation requires financial services companies to record and retain conversations with individuals directly involved with a sale. However, MiFID II will require conversations with individuals in the entire supply chain to be recorded and retained for a period of 5 years.
This change in legislation is expected to generate a 400% increase in the numbers of calls to be recorded and stored which will have a huge impact on telephony solutions. So by specifying a hosted telephony solution with an integrated call recording system, resellers can accommodate their customers’ current and forthcoming needs.
Whilst this may sound a bit of challenge for some, resellers can be assured of support from our team here at Zest4. We have vast experience in hosted telephony solutions and are here to help every step of the way: our team will help find hosted telephony opportunities in your customer base; we’ll give you the training you need to get your team up to speed; we can accompany you to customer meetings to help identify and specify correct solutions; we’ll help with installation as well as ongoing servicing and support.
The opportunity for hosted telephony solutions is growing day by day, so resellers shouldn’t hesitate in adding hosted solutions to their portfolios today.
For more information on hosted telephony solutions from Zest4, visit http://www.zest4.com/hosted-telephony.php or call our team on 0161 956 3355.